Firefly's Personal Finance Blog

Working out my spending impulses.

About Me

Terri

I am 40, single, no kids. I am a health care professional. I feel that I'm generally a very good saver and a not so good budgeter - hence the credit card debt. Hopefully, I'll be able to work on the latter.

Viewing the 'Debt diet' Category

So my final payment to Sallie Mae was finally processed after 4 days. Unfortunately, they also processed my regular automatic payment. So I have a credit sitting in my account that they refuse to return to me until they finish "processing" my loan. In 30-45 days! Never again.

As well, they always credited my extra payments that I sent through the mail to interest as well as principal. Now I'll pay the principal online and save myself the postage. My graduate school loans aren't to be in repayment until six months after I graduate at the end of 2008.

So I was looking at my Sallie Mae account. I have three loans, only one in repayment. I was looking at the measly $304.97 balance and I was like, why exactly am I not just paying this off? I have about $1500 in my checking account. So I made a payment online for the entire amount. So long Sallie Mae, you are outta here, girl! Well, at least until I have to repay my graduate school loans, ha!

Contribute $245 to my three accounts. My goal is $15,000 in 3 years, my current balance is just over$5,000.

DEBT:

I have about $2,000 on a credit card. I will contribute $500 plus the amount of my monthly purchases every payment.

My original Sallie Mae loan is now at $300. With automatic payments my loan will be paid off in about 4 months. My grad school loans will begin repayment 6 months after my December 2008 graduation.

My car payment will be $326. After finishing with the credit card balance I will contribute the extra to the car payment.

RETIREMENT:

Continue contributing $400 biweekly to my 457. That is an annual contribution of $10,400.

Continue to fund my Roth IRA to the maximum. That will be $5,000 in 2008.

HOUSE:

My payments are $313 biweekly. I occasionally get a few pennies interest from a savings account and will transfer to principal. Otherwise, my payments will continue as is for this category. I'm more focused on the other debt.

CAREER AND SCHOOL:

In somewhat related plans, I want to focus on school and looking for a new job. I'm off this week since I worked the holiday (12 hour shifts for 4 days) and I'm writing papers and taking civil service tests.

The lady asked why I wanted to take the test again since I scored so well. I told her that I wanted an 80 on the test. I scored a 74. She said that few people score so well and I must be a perfectionist. I'm not. What I am is really motivated to move on to a better position.

I took another test since it hadn't been 28 days since I took the one that I wanted to retest on. Next time I'll take a different one again. I'll keep taking them until I'm where I want to be.

Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University on CD is on clearance and I bought it. I've been listening to it in my new car. I enjoy listening to him, I don't pretent to believe or follow everything he advocate, but he inspires me to do better.

I'm determined to pay off my student loan and credit card in 3 months. I will then attack my car loan and grad school loans. Repayment isn't for 18 more months on the grad school loans so I will concentrate on the car loan which is at a low 4.94%. The grad school loan are at 6.8% and the student loans in repayment are at 7.25% with a $300 balance. The original balance was over $7,000.

My car loan came in at about $17,300. The grad school loans will be $20,500, but I'm getting several thousand back once the tuition is paid. I guess I will put it on the car loan before the grad school loan.

I just bought Alicia Keys new CD at Best Buy online. Just $9.99 and free shipping!

I sold my car Tuesday for $2,000. I'm happy to have it sold. I probably could have gotten more if I had been patient, but I wanted it done with and I was trying to do something good. It was somewhat of a stressful transaction for me and next time I'll know what to do differently.

I'm using the money to pay off my credit card and student loans for good. That will be such a good feeling. I was thinking about using it to pad my emergency fund, but Dave Ramsey has inspired me to get Sallie Mae out of my life!

Turned on the heater last night. 68 degrees is a little hot. I'll have to try lower the next time I need it. I may ask for an electric blanket for my birthday or Christmas.

I got my bill from Chase. It was as large as I expected what with the car repair and dental bill, but I'm not able to pay off all of my monthly charges yet as I was planning to do. I thought I would have enough overtime to cover it, but apparently not. After I get my third check for August I may be able to cover it.

I was thinking of the high interest rate that I'm currently paying and thinking of using some of the balance of my loan money to pay that credit card off once and for all. The loan rate is much better than my credit card rate. I'm now pretty excited about the prospect of getting rid of that debt - finally!